Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
The ability to strike anywhere in the world on short notice is one of the hallmarks of the Ranger battalions. A key to that is the ability to deploy everything they need in C130s. You can't put anything larger than a Stryker in a C130. From what I understand, you can barely put a Stryker in a C130. I think you might be able to 1 or 2 Brads in a C17 but don't quote me on that I know you can put them in a C5 and I have heard that you can put M1s in a C5 although I don't know that for sure. But even still with C17s and especially C5s you are severely limited in where you can land and even then I don't think that you can just roll off and into the fight.
SFC W
Whoa, we (the Army) have paid an shockingly HIGH price for fixating on C-130 "deployability". We've spent what, millions? billions? on trying to shoe-horn the Stryker, and then the FCS, into an airframe that first flew in 1952 (when the JEEP was the most numerous vehicle in the inventory), only to finally figure out that we really can't...

The last thing that we need to hear about is the C-130.
For strategic deployability, I think that the C-17's are much more appropriate for delivering heavy armor. Those were used to deliver the tiny armored task force to northern Iraq, to support the 173rd (One platoon of tanks, and three of infantry - one in Brads, two in M113s, plus engineers, support, etc)

The US continues to pay a high price chasing deployability, that it doesn't always even need. Well, the Army pays the price. IIRC, the USAF insisted that it needed more C-17s, until someone suggested that they could cut back on F-22 procurement to pay for 'em... (Perhaps my memory is rusty, these days, admittedly.)